Adafruit's Open-source Wearable Platform, Flora 62
ptorrone writes "Limor 'Ladyada' Fried's NYC based Open-source electronics studio, Adafruit, today announced their new open wearable platform called the FLORA (blog post & video). The FLORA is Arduino compatible as well as supporting a variety of sensors and add-on devices including: Bluetooth, GPS, 3-axis accelerometer, compass module, flex sensor, piezo, IR LED, push button, embroidered + capacitive keypad, OLED and more. The first round of hardware is in the hands of testers to create wearable projects."
Re:Why Atmel? (Score:3, Informative)
Because it is Arduino compatible. Arduinos are all Atmel chips. ARM is way more complicated than people need for these sorts of projects.
Arduino has been left in the dust long time ago (Score:3, Informative)
I will qualify this. If you are a programmer used to an IDE, Arduino sucks. It wes made to allow painters, breadmakers and other artists to make embedded elements, and maybe for a non-programmer, it may be the only (and best) thing out there.
I tried this and dropped it fast. Instead I ended up using Code Composer Studio. It works like a charm for all TI's boards. Try out the 430 development system on sale for $4.30. Great IDE with in circuit debugging and all the other features you are used to, and you are up and running in no time.
Android is also a good choice, powerful, but a little different if you are used to C/C++ insted of Java. Not only for phones but a lot of other embedded devices as well.
BTW, You can get used Samsung Galaxy with a new battery for $100. It is an incredible embedded device, and if you want buy an Arduino device with even a small part of the features, you will pay many times this.
!GHz ARM, 16BG flash, dilsplay,WiFi, Cameras, Graphics engine, xyz accelerometers, maybe gyros. If you need USB master you have to get android 4.0 based device.
Re:Arduino has been left in the dust long time ago (Score:3, Informative)
There's always the AVR GNU toolchain for programming Arduino boards in C. It comes with the (free) WinAVR IDE/Debugger and works with any IDE that can handle GCC et al.
Personally, I can't stand the way TI have tied their products to Code Composer Studio. It's free for some of the cheaper devices but if you want to use it on anything with a bit of muscle you'll be shelling out $500+ just to be able to program/debug the hardware you own.